Last Night I Dreamt About My Mother
Long time since I've seen her alive
even in a dream. She was difficult in the end
those days have been hard to think of hard to remember
for almost twenty years so when there she was
in my dream last night my only mother, strong
and beautiful woman from Grand Forks North Dakota
chain smoker even in the end when she was an old lady
a good bridge player until the day she died
Why Quit Everything Now she said a thousand times she did not
want to do what she did not want to do Who Ever Does
last night in my dream I was telling her what happened
these twenty years and the twenty before that last night
in my dream I told her what I could and my mother
a tough woman who could dance, who could flirt, who liked
Oscar Levant and Adlai Stevenson, who liked my father even loved him,
my mother proud of her two children but didn't want to say
she even said once The Queen Doesn't Cry Ever as though that was a good thing
in my dream my mother sang the song she sang every night when I was a child
You Are My Sunshine after so many years of not being together we both smiled.